Ok, googled the paper from June 29 2015. Grapefruit and orange juice may have higher risks. Grapefruit juice and oranges don't.

The association was strongest for grapefruit, followed by orange juice. Conversely, and interestingly, consuming either grapefruit juice or whole oranges was not associated with melanoma risk.

Orange juice isn't really that bad. The only reason their study picked up on a correlation to orange juice is likely that people in the study who drank orange juice tended to drink a lot of it. Grapefruit is well known to have much higher furanocoumarin levels. Genetic studies have shown that an orange is about 75 percent mandarin and 25 percent pomelo.

@Parker, now you tell me, i ate 7 Grapefruit in 5 days...

Someone has a grapefruit addiction! It's probably better you try to avoid excessive sun exposure for the next few days, but really it's nothing huge to worry about unless this type of grapefruit consumption is a lifelong pattern. Eating one grapefruit a day, every day of your life, would put you at a slightly higher risk, but is not quite on the verge of being unhealthy or hazardous. I would worry if you averaged 2 grapefruit a day though.

This is another example of why variety is so important in people's diets, and you should avoid excesses of any one type of food. As long as you don't overdo it, the Vitamin C and other beneficial nutrients found in grapefruit outweigh the small levels of furanocoumarins; I don't want to make anyone think grapefruit is not a healthy fruit.

As for varieties, there certainly is a lot of diversity within the pomelo family, enough to keep a grapefruit lover interested with a different variety every day of the week. Oro Blanco is a nice sweet one with milder flavor, no bitterness. Banpeiyu is the largest variety of citrus, an average one can easily be 11 inches in diameter.

The last time I was in Florida I picked 20 lbs of citrus in Feb. Three days later when I got on the plane there was no citrus. I did give a few pounds to hotel staff and the person with me ate 5 pounds. That was all I wanted when I tasted the difference in quality of the fruit in Kissimmee.

Yes, citrus may sound like a somewhat exotic fruit to many members in this forum, one that you have to go to the supermarket to buy, but in some parts of the U.S.A. (Southern CA, Florida, and the Gulf Coast region) citrus trees grow easily and are commonly grown in people's yards (or at least they used to be, most people do not have fruit trees in their yard anymore). I can walk through my neighborhood and there are some lemon trees, a few people have an orange tree, and I know two spots in the surrounding area where people have a grapefruit.

Citrus grow easily in Nor Cal as well (except Limes which die back from cold).

Over the last 10+ years or so, I've acquired hundreds of fruiting (and nut, herbs, and perennial vegetable) plants and trees: various mulberries, elderberries, autumn olives, goumi, cranberry, citrus, apples, pears, peaches, bananas, palm fruits, figs, plums, apriums, aronia, American beautyberry, hybrid chestnuts, pecan, loquats, quince, feijoa, turmeric, ginger, Kaki and hybrid Persimmons, asparagus, mint, prickly pear, sunchokes, white (O'Henry perhaps) and Japanese sweet potatoes, tropical raspberries, kiowa and 1-2 other types of blackberries, sugar cane, paw paws, honeyberries, several mayhaws, chinese haw, lavelle haw, red and gold azarole, muscadines and bunch grapes, Chilean guava, Asian pears, Italian medlar, jujubes, black walnut, black cherry, surinam cherry, olives, avocados, pomegranates, blueberries - both wild and named types, che, sumac, passion fruit, and? I am a constant experimenter, and not everything I've tried has been a success.

For citrus, I have oranges, including a blood orange and a cara cara/red naval, a meyer lemon, duncan, marsh white, and sambo grapefruits, a minneola and ugli/unique tangelo, some type of honey tangerine, three grapefruit seedlings in the ground, as well as a small group of red-fleshed grapefruit seedlings I got from a friend of a friend that actually planted his from a seed. He said it took 15 years to get the first fruit, but today, 25 years later, it's a huge 35'+ tree, one he has to use a 30' ladder to pick the grapefruits on. It's almost majestic, to see a citrus tree that large, especially when it's full of grapefruit. They kind of look like bowling balls growing on the tree from a distance. Hopefully I can get one of those beauties on my property. I'm also trying pomelos from seed, as the grafted trees usually get zapped from the cold spells here. By planting something on its own roots, it may be able to build up a cold tolerance. To me, there's nothing better, in the citrus realm, than a good ugli or pomelo, for fresh eating. The local Asian market has had red-fleshed pomelos, between 2 and 3 pounds, for $1.99 lately, whereas publix and other grocery stores have been selling them for like $1.69 per pound. So, I grab several at the Asian market each time I'm there.

Just this year, I've started getting into subtropical and tropical plants, like atemoya, black sapote, biriba, carob, 'Mexican' and 'Pink' (don't you love common names that could be one of several varieties) guavas, a couple varieties of taro/malanga, mango, pineapple, Barbados cherry, lychee, Chinese and white (true/dioscorea) yams, jackfruit, and trying to start others, from seeds: purple star apple, sugar apple, custard apple, sancoya, soursop, blackberry jam fruit, Peruvian apple cactus, red pitaya/dragon fruit, carambola, longan, and sapodilla. I've been working on rebuilding an 8x12 greenhouse, to winterize some of this stuff, and hopefully by winter 2016, I'll have my 16x24 greenhouse up as well.

In the spring, I'll be looking to add more stuff to my subtropial/tropical collection, possibly: katuk, moringa, yellow dragon fruit, Okinawa spinach, longevity spinach, malabar spinach, pandan, yacon, plantains, Florida cranberry hibiscus, wax jambu, black gold jackfruit, 'silas woods' sapodilla, 'biew kiew' longan, rio grande cherry, tr hovey dwarf papaya, lemon grass, stevia, jaboticaba, and?

So, I'll just briefly explain why I went toward more tropical stuff this year. Over time, my successes with plants became more and more, and I had to replace less plants, plants that failed. As of today, most of my prime planting space is taken up by fruiting plants. There just isn't as much space to keep going in the same direction. The only way to move forward was to do dense planting, and there was only one prime area left. I could plant 5 or 6 trees there, or I could install a swimming pool or something, OR I could build a greenhouse. It was a tough choice to make, but this year, I got on a new, more healthy diet, and I am having to spend much more money on food to keep up with it.

It may seem cheaper to go to the grocery store and buy a mango, a papaya, or a bag of spinach than to grow similar things in an area where they won't normally grow outside, but every time I buy a bag of spinach, it lasts 2-3 days max before turning black. So, 80% of it ends up being wasted. I also spend anywhere from $5 to $15 on gas, depending on where I need to shop. So, running to the grocery store every 3 days ends up being expensive in itself. On the other hand, if I have something spinach-like, I can grab a handful of it the day I'm going to use it, and I don't have to worry about the rest rotting. That could be greens, moringa, camote (sweet potato) tops, or whatever. Also, with having multiple greenhouses going, I'm planning to keep things like sweet potato plants alive year-round, to give them a growing boost before they are planted out when the average nightly temperatures are over 60 degrees. I looked just about everywhere locally this year, for sweet potato plants, from farmer's markets, garden stores, and even feed stores, but they just don't sell them here. So, I had to go out and actually find grocery store sweet potatoes and go through the process of getting starts for them, and I probably lost several weeks of growing due to that. It's something I want to be prepared for next year.

Between growing my own produce and doing food foraging, I hope that it will dramatically reduce food costs over time.

" [...] a small group of red-fleshed grapefruit seedlings I got from a friend of a friend that actually planted his from a seed. He said it took 15 years to get the first fruit, but today, 25 years later, it's a huge 35'+ tree, one he has to use a 30' ladder to pick the grapefruits on. It's almost majestic, to see a citrus tree that large, especially when it's full of grapefruit."

Yes, fruit trees planted on their own roots can often grow much bigger than 'normal' ones that are all grafted onto rootstock, it also takes many years longer before they begin producing fruit, so that 15 years is not surprising. Really, if you are planting a fruit tree for posterity and have the room, you should consider planting the tree own-root. But it is very uncommon to ever see these trees.

Own-root cherry trees take 12-15 years before they begin producing. Has anyone ever seen that gigantic Black Tartarian cherry tree in the Owen Rose Garden in Oregon? Well over 160 years old, it's the size of an oak tree.

The growing habits and lifespan for 'normal' fruit trees that grafted are completely different. Few people want to wait 15 years for fruit.

Lifespan of a grafted tree, with a rootstock that's fully compatible should be the same as a seed tree.

size wise, normal trees (grafted) are on rootstock that is not normal size. If you ordered your trees on standard rootstock it will also be full size.

Depends on your definition of "fully compatible". A typical grafted cherry tree may only live 20 years, and we're not even talking about ultra-dwarf rootstock. If the rootstock were truly 100 percent compatible, there would be little point to grafting in the first place, at least with cherry trees. It is the slight degree of incompatibility that causes cherries to be stunted, so the young tree will divert energy towards fruit production rather than it all going to the growth of leaves and branches. This is also the reason why nitrogen fertilizer can prevent a young tree from producing fruit.

The point is to bypass the juvenile stage and gaurentee the quality of fruit.

i feel it's inaccurate to say there is little point.

Do you think the rootstock cultivar is easier to grow from cuttings than simply trying to root cuttings of the desired fruiting cultivar? otherwise I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.

I think you might have a misconception about why grafting leads to fruit production earlier in the life of the tree. In most cases fruit trees are stronger on their own roots.

No sir I think you have the misconception. Incompatibility is not the main cause of precociousness, the maturity of the scion is.

Rootstocks are used for disease resistance as much as anything else.

So are you saying it's easier to just start growing the rootstock now and then decide later what variety you want to graft onto it? Or does the rootstock variety grow faster? I'm not sure I understand.

I said nothing about starting to grow rootstock now. Although the rootstock should be a year old when budding

i feel your trying to confuse the discussion.

Rootstock is used to provide disease resistance to trees that the fruiting wood might not nessisarly have. And in most cases won't. Second comes size control. If desired.

I suppose my real question was did you have an alternate explanation of how rootstock can "bypass the juvenile stage and gaurentee the quality of fruit" ?

I got the impression you were implying that "the maturity of the scion" was your given explanation for this. If that's what you were trying to communicate, then how does "maturity of the scion" have anything to do with a grafted tree being able to "bypass the juvenile stage and gaurentee the quality of fruit" ?

I have the self control of a goat in a grain mill so I'm addicted to many things and one of my better addictions is "creating things" including but not limited to music, songs, buildings, things from wood, audio / computer cables, computers, vegetable plants, and fruit trees. Fruit trees are just another one of my creative addictions I have 25 pear trees with 37 kinds of pears , 6 plum trees, 3 peach trees, 15 kinds of apples, 5 kinds of citrus, 3 kinds of pomigranites , 8 kinds of grapes, 2 loquats, 2 guavas, and 2 figs, this year I am putting in 30 new pear trees , 6 new peach trees, 8 new plum trees and 3 apricot trees. I love to the eat fruit mainly pears plums and apples , but I also like the feeling I get when I look at my little orchard and know that I created every tree in it.

I hear you Mac. I keep telling myself to stop planting new fruit trees but every Spring I keep on adding at least five new trees the last nine years. I last counted was about 100 plus fruit trees.

Tony

"I have 25 pear trees with 37 kinds of pears [...], this year I am putting in 30 new pear trees"

That definitely sounds like an addiction, macmanmatty2. You should seek help. Sounds more like a commercial orchard than a hobby.

l

"but I also like the feeling I get when I look at my little orchard and know that I created every tree in it."

You weren't the one who actually created it, God did. (or evolution, if you prefer to believe that)

Sorry but God did not insert the scion into the rootstock wrap the graft with tape cover it with tin foil and then care for it. I created those trees edible pyrus comminus trees that make fruit otherwise they'd just be pyrus calleryana

I'm addicted !

i have a very small backyard so most of my trees are in large pots .

growin in Phoenix az

(most are 2-3 years old already and many fruiting ).

here is what I have :

Anna Apple

orange

li jujube

pinapple guava

5 ice cream banana trees

pomegranite

blackberry bush

guava

white sapote

Glenn mango

coconut mango

loquat

acerola bush

lemon

elderberry bush

guava

moringa

mexicola avacado

Addicted ! Yes ! I love it !

New additions:

Passé-crassane (a superb Winter pear variety said to be a hybrid between quince and pear)

Karp's Sweet Quince (originated from the Majes Valley in Peru, supposedly the best quince variety for eating raw, since normally quince has to be cooked)

also placed an order for the rare pear variety Nurun Burun, it should arrive in the Fall. This variety is said to have exceptional flavor and texture, very difficult to find. One blog post I read from chef Dave Arnold stated that it was aromatic like quince, and had soft flesh without a hint of astringency, so this was too intriguing to pass up.

Oh, and lest I forget, there is also a banana plant. I did plenty of research and supposedly 'Pisang Ceylon' is regarded by some experts as the top best tasting out of all the banana varieties. It is a specific cultivar of Mysore. (I actually got 2 of them but one appears to have died over the winter)

For those of you who do not know, the fruit of a quince has a wonderful fragrance. It is floral, a sweet fragrance similar to apple and very reminiscent of a particular fragrance note found in pear, but also mixed with the smell of violets. I had read about quince and just regarded it as a fruit that was probably not worth growing, but the first time I actually found quince at the store I could not believe how fragrant it was! The aroma and flavor is so unlike apple or pear. It was like I wanted to keep eating the fruit even though I couldn't eat more than a small amount at a time because it was so astringent and hard. That is how I developed an interest in anything related to quince that could be suitable for eating raw, I even started a thread about this topic here: Any Pear or Apple varieties with an aroma like Quince?

NYC postage stamp yard, cold winters, so of course I planted grapes, peaches, pears etc outside, shoe-horning them in where I could in the ground and berries in planters.

After those first few harvests, I went out of control with expanding varieties and used "cross pollination" and "better fruiting" as an excuse for why I needed more. Now I've gotten greedy and started buying tropicals.

Its 25 trees/plants later and I cant stop, I just bought 3 more today.

So yes I am a fruit tree addict.

Me me me! Took two down. Planted ten and grafted about 20 rootstocks of Apple, pear and stone fruits. Now trying to find homes for them. Thinking I'm more addicted to grafting. Now have a 25 variety apple tree. 7 pear varieties on two trees and 8 types of plums on few existing plum trees.

HMMM does it count as an addiction if your spouse and children remark that they think you should start a fruit tree self help group?

Zone 2a? When does your growing season start/end? (Say hi to Santa for me)

Well the poplar trees are just budding now, normally the apples start to bud early in May, and our first fall frost is around beginning of Sept.

It is amazing how many fruit trees I can still pack into that short season. My options end up narrowed but apparently not narrow enough :o)

Parker said:

I suppose my real question was did you have an alternate explanation of how rootstock can "bypass the juvenile stage and gaurentee the quality of fruit" ?

I got the impression you were implying that "the maturity of the scion" was your given explanation for this. If that's what you were trying to communicate, then how does "maturity of the scion" have anything to do with a grafted tree being able to "bypass the juvenile stage and gaurentee the quality of fruit" ?

My answer

a mature bud from the scion will be as mature as the tree it came from. It will have for practical purposes absolutely no juvenile period. It will also produce the exact same fruit. Seed trees will not produce the exact same fruit for most kinds of fruit. The exceptions are the seeds that have embryos that are what's called nuclear. Which means it's an exact copy of the mother. Such rarity occurs with some citrus and mangos for example. But many citrus and mangos don't have nuclear embryos. Almost everything else like cherries or apples, the seed will not make a tree who's fruit is exactly like the mom.

the rootstock plays no part in it. A rooted cutting would perform the same as a grafted tree in regards to the scion skipping the juvenile phase and the gaurenteed quality of the fruit.

Even where you don't care about the fruit, such as rootstock, the trees are not made with seed because each seed is different and unpredictable. Most rootstocks like cherry and apples are grown by growing a tree, chopping it down, and when it grows lots of new shoots they are partially covered in dirt. The next year the dirt is removed and the rooted shoots are cut from the tree stump and used-sold as rootstock.

ok pip, let's just leave it at that.

Reminds me of an old story about a conversation between two Chinese philosophers. They were walking by the side of a river and one of them said "Look how happy the fish are just swimming around in the river!", to which the other retorted "How do you know they are happy? You are not a fish."

"You are not me. How do you know I don't know the fish are happy?" answered the first.

I'm a fellow fruit addict; I've never counted how many fruit trees i grow in a 30 by 5 foot patio.

8 blueberries

10 cane berries

2 cherries

1 avocado

1 olive

3 pomegranate

1 grape

2 moringa

1 grapefruit

1 peach

5 dragon fruit

2 cactus pear

1 fig

1 African fig

1 paw paw

10 pineapple

1 walnut

1 oak

1 paw paw

Im hoping to add dwarf avocado, moringa, lemon and olive this spring. Plus anything that my research turns up.

I want to grow quince but need to find out if it will grow in a tub and self polinating. It takes a lot of water so a full size plant wouldn't work.

Would love to try some from seed like coffee, tea, berries, nuts, and chocolate. Ones that make nice house plants to play around with

Definitely going to add more I'm eying my neighbors trees and wondering what varieties they are growing.

Just bought 80 blueberry plugs and 20 cranberry plugs from hartmanns.

i really need to move out of this apartment...

Yes, quince is self-pollinating, and yes it can grow in a pot, although I would recommend a big 24 inch pot. Quince is comparable to a semi-dwarf apple tree.

Quince does not require as much water as apple or pear and is actually fairly drought-tolerant after the tree has a little time to establish its roots. It has been grown in the Eastern Mediterranean region since ancient times (think drier climate).

I do not see much point to growing your own olive trees (unless they are for decorative purposes). You do realize that olives have to be cured, right? (they are poisonous if eaten straight off the tree)

And walnut, that takes up a lot of space, isn't going to do well in a pot, and the roots give off a chemical into the soil that makes it difficult for other plants to grow near a walnut tree.

Still, long ago there used to be many streets lined with walnut trees, and fresh walnuts were essentially available for free. It makes so much difference to have fresh walnuts. A lot of the prepackaged walnuts sold in stores I cannot eat, they make my stomach feel a little sick. It is because Walnuts are high in unsaturated oils that do not keep so well and can go slightly bad with prolonged exposure to air and light, especially if the outer shell has already been cracked open. I do think a lot of people don't eat Walnuts anymore because they've never had fresh ones.

Maybe you should get a recipe for making acorn flour. Oak trees can be used as a food source (and not just for animals!)

Pineapple, yes, I learned in my biology class that pineapple is one of the less common varieties of plants that operates through CAM photosynthesis; instead of taking it in during the daytime it takes in carbon dioxide at night to minimize having to open its pores during the day time, to help minimize water losses from evaporation in the hot sun.

I am so tempted to get a grapefruit (or 2 or 3... ) but I do not have the room for them. Maybe an Oroblanco and a Melogold, and Ruby Red...

Nuts? I highly, highly recommend checking out Nolan nursery. Two years ago they said they were elderly and thinking of retiring. Then they updated their website.

No hican, hickory, and another I can't think of for the last couple years. But they have named grafted walnuts, chestnuts, butternuts and some others.

I have like 10 trees from them.

lol - luv this topic!

My Dad started me on planting trees when he started a Christmas tree farm and pine plantation. I've probably planted several thousand trees since - many of them fruit and nut trees. I'm now planting for future generations with reforestation of clear cuts with hybrid oaks and other wildlife species. My family thinks I'm crazy...

I told myself that I had enough apple trees, soooooo........ I started buying plums :o)

I am addicted to getting bargain trees and seeing what happens. Maybe it is a form of gambling? So I go to the local mail-order company's outlet, get the $12 tree at the grocery, buy the very last 80% markdowns from the big box stores.... Right now I think that I have 9 apples, 3 cherries, 3 plums, 2 pears and a peach. Six in ground, the rest in pots (although the native plums and the nanking cherry have rooted into the ground through the pots). I have been considering selling my home of 25 years to move to a place with more land.

I didn't even count the flowering quince that gave me abundant lovely fruit one year (delicious preserves!) but I've been battling rust on it the past 4 seasons so no fruit. I may just take it out.

Oh, I nearly forgot the 3 bareroot trees that I picked up last week for $2 each. They are heeled in in the compost pile for now while I wait to see if it is not too late for them. Another apple, a peach and a pear. They looked awfully dry but still had green under the bark.

I'm addicted. Started last fall with 10 blueberries and 6 muscadines a fig and a pomegranite. continued this spring with 2 peaches 2 nectarines 2 apricots 3 apples a pear 10 blackberries and a chinese chestnut. I'm running out of room!

If only space was easy to get. I have like 40 trees. Unfortunately I live in an apartment so some are here indoors(the citrus), some are in the vacant lot here, some are at my moms and a couple scattered in random places. That does t include the 90 blueberry bushes, 20 cranberry vines, the grapes, and others I can't even remember right now.

seriously I need at least 5 acres when I buy a house eventually. Hoping for 30-40.

olive, avocado. Fig, grapefruit, lemon, dragonfruit, cactus pear, Cherry, walnut, pomergranete, 6 brambles, and 5 blueberries. Going to add more blueberries, figs, mulberry, elderberry, grape and thornless berries eventually

lol pip, 40 trees and in an apartment?????? That is a serious addiction. You will need a nice quarter section of land, that should keep you going :0)

Figs, Citrus, Olives, Poms, Macadamias, Mangos, Wine Grapes, Avocados, and a few others, BUT now it's tomatoes! No end in sight!

No, 18 in the apartment, the rest where I said they were in the last post.

My wife and I added 2 apple and 2 pear trees to our existing apple and peach. This year is when my addiction really started up. I've planted 1 apple, 2 plum(2 varieties), 3 cherry(3 different varieties), 3 peach( 2 varieties), and 2 American persimmon trees. I've also planted 1 pecan tree that was given to us from my grandmother. We also have 18 peach seeds planted in pots waiting/hoping that we can start a few of our own. We also have several non-fruit/nut trees planted on our 7 acre property here in Nebraska.

my mistake pip, but you must know lots about growing in containers.

A little. Always learning though

I bought a house with a backyard that is a former 60 years old citrus grove, one of the reasons I bought this specific house. The north part of the grove was Washington Navels and the south part was Valencia. The original home owners planted Minneola Tangelo and a Pink Blush Grapefruit, now 40 years old. Originally I was working on restoring it to look like the grove it once was but now I"m adding enough that it will look different as I have too many trees to fit. It originally had about 18 full size 20' diameter trees but I'm adding a few different varieties and have 58 original trees plus trees planted plus trees in pots to plant. WAY too many so one 100' side is now going to be Espaliered citrus along the wall. Still have 6-7 in pots in the front walk. Another 5 different Avocados.

Just grapefruit: Pink Blush, Duncan, Oro Blanco, Melogold, Rio Red, Valentine, Cocktail, Chandler Pomello.

Of course, this many trees in drought stricken SoCal is a problem so I now am working on 1920 gallon rain water recovery and grey water recovery system. In the meantime, I have 8 42 gallon trash cans in the inside roof corners that get filled each rainstorm so I water with almost all rainwater recovery. I'm not addicted, really!

Some of you should see this thread as well:

Maximizing growing space on a small residential lot